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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 8 (November 2, 1936)

A Canoe Expedition

A Canoe Expedition.

I take this animated narrative of a Maori canoe voyage up the Manawatu and through the Gorge in 1850 from an unpublished diary of Sir Donald Maclean, one of many Maclean documents sent to me by Lady Maclean of Napier. Maclean (afterwards the great Native Minister) was at that time on his way from Wellington to Hawke's Bay, then a purely Maori region, to make the first purchases of land there for settlement, under instructions from the Governor, Sir George Grey.

The only other pakeha in the party was a Dr. Reed.

The party of Manawatu and Rangitikei Maoris numbered about thirty men and women. The expedition, in three large canoes, started from Moutoa, near the mouth of the Manawatu, on December 3. The first day's work was mostly paddling, then the canoe crews took to the toko, the pole, most of the voyage up the forest waterway.